OUR BIRD 
ENDS 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 




CARDINAL. 

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ATKINSON, MENT2EB & GROVER, CHICAGO 



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OUR BIRD 
FRIENDS 

Containing msmy^Ci 
things young folks O 
ought to know— and 
likewise grown-ups 

B7 GEORGE F. BURBA 



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CO NEW YORK 
THE OUTING PUBLISHING 
COMPANY -^C^ MCMVIII 



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Copyright, 1908, by 
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY, 



All Rights Reserved. 






U0RARY of OON^ESS 
Two Copiw rteceiyod 

APR 27 1908 

jowngtu entry 

■■SWS&A XXc. No, 

COPY B. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEH PAGE! 

I Facts About Birds 3 

II More Facts About Birds . . . ... , .9 

III How Birds Fly and Sing .15 

IV The Flicker or Yellow-Hammer 23 

V The Robin . . 29 

VI The Humming Bird 37 

VII The Blue Jay ... 43 

VIII The Redbird or Cardinal . . . . . . .49 

IX The Swallow . 55 

X Bird Migration 63 

XI The Whip-Poor-Will 71 

XII The Crow 77 

XIII The Pigeon . . 83 

XIV The Kingfisher . .89 

XV The Cowbird 95 

XVI The English Sparrow 101 

XVII The Quail 107 

XVIII The Bat 115 

XIX The Redhead Woodpecker 121 

XX The Meadow Larks 127 

XXI The Blackbirds 137 

XXII The Wren . . . . . . . . . . .143 

XXIII The Oriole . . .149 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Cardinal ......... Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Flicker . . . . . . . . . . . .24 

Robin . . . . . .30 

Blue Jay ........... 44 

Whippoorwill . . . . . . . . . . .72'' 

Kingfisher . . . . . . . . . . .90 

Red-Headed Woodpecker . . . . . . . .122 

Meadowlark ......... '. 128 * 

Red-Winged Blackbird . . . . . . . . .138 

Baltimore Oriole . . . . . . . . . .150 



FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 




OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

CHAPTER I 

FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 

LL birds lay eggs — otherwise they would not 
be birds. All birds are covered, or nearly 
covered, with feathers, but in a few cases the 
feathers are almost as fine as hair or fur. 
But all birds do not fly, although all of them have some 
kind of wings. Some birds are so large and have such small 
wings that the wings are not able to carry them. In such 
cases you will find either that the bird can run very fast or 
that it is a good swimmer, so that it is not necessary for it to 
fly, either in catching its food or escaping its enemies. 

All animals, including birds, for birds belong to the animal 
kingdom, seem to be built for just one purpose — to live. In 
order to live it must get something to eat and be able to get out 
of the way of its enemies. 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



If you will take a bird — or any animal for that matter — and 
examine it, you will find that everything about it is useful in 
assisting it to live. For instance, the color of the quail is to 
enable it to hide, and its toe nails are to enable it to scratch for 
bugs and buried seeds. 

Birds that can fly rapidly do not have to hide so well as other 
birds, to escape the enemies that lie in wait. The quail can- 
not fly so fast as a hawk, but it can hide so cleverly that a 
hawk cannot find it. 

The bird's bill takes the place of teeth. People sometimes 
say that a duck has teeth, but that is not the case. A duck's 
bill is rough on the edges like a file, so that it can hold slippery 
frogs and little minnows, but it does not use its bill in chewing 
food— just in gathering it and holding it until it can get the food 
into its mouth and swallow it. 

The skull of a bird is different from the skull of other animals. 
The skull of a squirrel is composed of several bones, fastened 
together in a sort of saw-tooth style, like the edges of two saws 
put together. A bird's skull is in one piece. 

In some birds, the parrot for instance, the upper bill is a part 
of the skull, but in most birds the bill is only fastened to the 



FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 



skull. In such cases there is generally a straight bill or a very 
long one — or one that is both straight and long. 

And right there is a little thing worth knowing. Where a 
bird's bill is only fastened to its skull there is a soft, spongy 
growth that forms a sort of rubber ball. When such a bird 
pecks at a hard substance, it does not jar its head as would be 
the case if the bill were a part of the skull. If a parrot were 
to peck at a telegraph pole as hard as a woodpecker does, it 
would give him the headache, but a woodpecker never feels the 
jar because he has a rubber-tired bill, as you might say. 

Many birds have a larger brain in proportion to their size 
than has man. A man's brain is from one twentieth to one 
thirtieth of his entire body — or ought to be — but the brain of a 
canary bird is one fourteenth of its entire body. But the same 
proportion does not hold good in all birds. A goose has a brain 
of only one three-hundred-and-sixtieth of its body, and an eagle 
of one two-hundred-and-sixtieth of its body, while the little old 
English sparrows have a brain of one twenty-fifth of their weight. 




MORE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 




CHAPTER II 

MORE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 

"AVE you ever noticed the framework of a bird? 
If you have noticed the carpenters putting up 
a new house you have seen a lot of planks and 
crosspieces and sills and rafters and all kinds 
of timbers and pipes, strung about in many ways. 

Well, if you could see a bird before it gets its feathers and 
flesh on it, it would look like a new house — so many bones 
and strings and leaders running here and there. Every one 
of them serves some useful purpose, and in hardly any two 
birds are the rafters and sills and plumbing exactly alike. 

It is no wonder that a chicken does not fall off of the limb 
when it goes to sleep ; it can't. It is built to sit upon a limb and 
sleep. When it sits down its toes close up and it cannot open 
them until it rises. The only way a chicken could fall off of a 
limb would be for it to stand up. 

The leaders running down into the toes are too short, in one 
sense of the word. When the leg is bent the toes close. When 



10 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

an old rooster stands with one leg doubled up, the toes are 
closed. Watch an old hen walk; every time she raises her foot 
the toes close in. The birds that do not roost upon limbs have 
longer leaders in their legs and when they sit down their toes do 
not have to close. 

Feathers do not grow upon anything but birds. When 
examined by the chemist, a feather is found to contain about 
the same substance as hair, or horn, or hoof. There is no 
blood in feathers, nor nerves. That is, there is no "feeling" in 
a feather. It does not hurt a bird to clip the feathers, but it 
must hurt some to pull them out, just as it hurts a boy to pull 
out his hair. 

The small feathers, or down, upon the breast and sides of a 
duck or goose, however, grow so shallow and come out so easily, 
that it probably does not hurt the bird to pluck it as is done in 
the spring by the farmer's wife. Those small feathers would 
drop out any way, as a duck or goose does not need so many 
feathers in the summer. 

Birds that live in water, or aquatic birds as they are called by 
people who know a great deal and want to use big words, have 
more feathers, and of a different kind, than other birds. The 



MORE FACTS ABOUT BIRDS 11 

feathers upon some water fowl are so thick and lie so closely 
to the bird that shot will not reach the skin. The feathers are 
also oily so that water will not go through them. The diving 
birds do not get wet, and if you will take a bird that has just 
come out of the water, you will find its skin nice and dry. 

There are three separate parts to a feather. First, the quill, 
or hollow, bony-like substance at the bottom and which grows 
in the bird. Then the shaft, which is only a continuation of 
the quill and is the center of the feather. And the vane or 
beard, that fine, thin substance which protrudes from the shaft. 
There are other scientific parts of a feather, but we are not 
going into detail here. 

Have you ever noticed that when you get frightened suddenly 
little bumps form upon the skin — goose bumps some people call 
them? Well, if you were a bird there would be a feather in 
each one of those little bumps, and, of course, when the bumps 
"raised up" your feathers would be ruffled. That is why the 
feathers upon a bird ruffle up when the bird is scared or mad. 
It is the same process which causes the hair upon a dog's back 
to rise when it gets mad — or an old cat. You know how the 
fur on her back stands up straight at times. 



12 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



There are some birds that are dark in summer and snow white 
in winter. That is not because the feathers change color, but 
because new feathers grow out. New feathers are growing out 
on birds all the time. 




HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING 




CHAPTER III 

HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING 

BIRD contains more air than any other animal 
in proportion to its size. It is a living balloon, 
almost. That is why it can fly so easily, and 
it is also the reason a small bird can make 
such a big noise with its throat. 

Every bone in a bird is hollow and contains air. The quill of 
the feather is hollow and the shaft, while filled with a spongy 
substance, also contains much air. There are many air cells 
and passages in a bird and it can fill them or empty them 
directly from its lungs. In many birds there is actually a con- 
nection between the lungs and the feathers, so that such birds 
can pump the air into the quills or draw it out as it desires. 

When it is remembered that a bird has such a splendid supply 
of air, it is not strange that it can make music. The throat of a 
songster is built very much as is a clarionet, containing a sort of 
reed over which the air flows and which makes a sound. 



16 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

Although there are no mute birds, all of them do not sing. It 
is only the male bird, as a general thing, that sings. Women 
would probably say that the females are so busy they do not 
have time to sing. The female is the housekeeper with birds as 
with people. The male does most of the strutting around and 
bragging, and wears the most gorgeous costume — we are talking 
about birds, not about people — but the mother bird looks after 
the children most of the time — and it is a lot of worry to keep 
them from getting into trouble. The male does help to feed 
them, and will protect them while the female is absent, but it is 
the mother bird to whom the young ones owe most. 

A bird has a double shutter to its eye. When a boy wants to 
look at the sun he has to get a piece of smoked glass, but when a 
bird wants to look at the sun it can just close the inside shutter 
— and there you are. Then, when it turns its head away from 
the sun — up goes the shutter. 

A fish has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes at all. That is 
because a fish does not need any protection for its eyes, because 
the rays of the sun are not so intense after they pass through 
the water. But when the aquatic birds dive, they need some- 
thing over their eyes to keep the water out of them, and they 



HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING 17 

draw down the inside shutter, through which they can still 
see a little. 

All birds are not alike when they are first hatched. That is, 
some of them jump out of the shell and go running about and 
pick up things to eat, while others break through the shell 
while they are still blind and with never a feather to cover their 
little red bodies. There isn't much difference in the appearance 
of a young meadow lark and a young mouse — both of them are 
little, wormy-like naked things with big black dots where they 
are going to have eyes. But later on fur grows out upon one 
and feathers upon the other. 

An ostrich comes out of the shell a great, awkward thing and 
gets up and runs around and eats, and if it ever stops eating 
it is because it can find nothing else to eat. That is why some 
folks say boys are as hungry as ostriches. 

The song birds are all helpless when they are hatched and 
have to be brought up carefully. A baby quail can run almost 
as fast as a boy, when it is first hatched, and it can hide so 
quickly that a hawk cannot find it. 

Birds do not have the sense of smell that other animals have. 
It used to be supposed that birds could smell an object when 



18 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

they were away off from it, but that is probably not true. An 
experiment has been tried many times with buzzards, which 
were supposed to be able to smell a dead animal for miles. A 
dead animal is hidden in the leaves or weeds so that it cannot 
be seen, and is permitted to decay. If it cannot be seen a 
buzzard will not find it. Then, stuffed skins of animals, wholly 
without odor, have been placed where they could be seen and 
it was only a little while until the buzzards flying over saw the 
objects and at once alighted upon them and began trying to 
eat the dummies. 

Nor can all birds taste. There are a few that can, but as a 
rule birds do not taste their food. When a bird picks up some- 
thing which it decides not to eat and puts it aside, it is not be- 
cause the object does not taste exactly right. Birds can gobble 
down red peppers without knowing that they are hot. 

But when it comes to seeing, a bird excels all other things. 
Its eyes are made like telescopes and are self-adjusting. In 
most birds the eyes are fixed in the side of the head, but that is 
not invariably the case. An owl's eyes are fixed in the front 
of its head and they are fixed to stay fixed. The owl has to 
turn its whole head when it wants to turn its eyes. They can 



HOW BIRDS FLY AND SING 



19 



not look out of the corners of their eyes, as we sometimes say 
about people. 

There used to be a funny story told about an owl that sat 
upon the top of a pole. A boy found out that the owl would 
twist its head in any direction he walked, so he walked around 
and around the pole and the owl finally twisted its head off. 
But that is only a funny story and is not true. 




THE FLICKER OR YELLOW-HAMMER 




mtimmmi 1 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FLICKER OR YELLOW-HAMMER 

OME people call a flicker a yellow-hammer, and 
others call it a highholer. The people who 
know a great deal about birds say it is the 
pigeon woodpecker, and it is often described 
as a yellow-shafted woodpecker. But flicker is good enough 
name, for that is what it says more frequently than it says 
anything else. 

A full-grown flicker is a foot long and has a wing spread of 
six inches more than its length — eighteen inches from tip to tip. 
It is a gorgeous bird, well marked, and unlike any other bird in 
coloring. There are all shades of yellow upon it, a little jet 
black, some bright red, and the feathers, individually, contain 
round spots and straight lines. It is a beauty, this flicker is, 
so far as coloring goes. 

Its home is in the hollow of a tree. It pecks a round hole in 
a snag or pole or tree — generally dead wood, because the inside 



24 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

of dead wood is often decayed to the extent that after a bird 
gets a hole through the shell it has little trouble in rounding 
out a nest. 

Whenever it is possible to do so, the flicker makes two entrances 
to its home, one above the other, and sometimes on opposite 
sides of the snag. When a bad boy climbs up and puts his 
hand over one hole the flicker can dart out of the other. 

A flicker lays four eggs, pure white, and when the young birds 
are first hatched they are covered with down. The first feathers 
show some color, but it is not until the flicker gets full-grown 
that he comes out in his best suit. 

When the mother bird is sitting upon the eggs the gentleman 
of the house is very attentive. He will catch a nice juicy ant 
and carry it to his wife. Occasionally he will take the place of 
the female upon the nest while she goes out for exercise and to 
get a little water, but if his good wife does not hurry home he 
will go out and look for her. He seems to get tired sitting there 
by himself. 

It should have been stated that the flicker is also called the 
ground woodpecker, because it feeds upon the ground a great 
deal. Its feet are made for climbing trees and it can stick to 




I 



SS5 

fe JS >R 



THE FLICKER OR YELLOW-HAMMER 25 

the side of a telegraph pole and scoot around on the other side 
as a boy comes in sight, but it enjoys getting down on the ground 
and hunting the nests of ants. 

And because its foot is built for climbing trees, the flicker is 
a poor walker. It stumbles over the ground and cannot run at 
all. It does not scratch like the quail, but it has a long, sharp 
bill, and a tongue like a piece of wire with a barb upon the 
end, and it can reach down into an ant hole and draw out 
the insects. 

The flicker's flesh is coarse and dark and strong — almost as 
dark as a piece of liver — and while some people eat them they 
are not considered good food. Where they are eaten at all, 
they ought to be parboiled thoroughly, but there is really no use 
in eating flickers. In many states it is against the law to kill 
them, and it ought to be against the law in all states. 

After you get well acquainted with the flicker you can tell him 
as far as you can see him by the way he flies. He flies with a 
graceful swoop, flapping the wings a few times and then closing 
them as he coasts through the air for ten or twenty feet, again 
opening them and catching the air as he shoots upward for 
another flapping of the wings. 



26 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



The flicker does not sing, but he is never quiet. He chat- 
ters and fusses and calls to his mate, and if an old red-headed 
woodpecker alights upon his snag he makes a great to-do about 
it, as if some one were robbing him of his rights. 




THE ROBIN 



CHAPTER V 



THE ROBIN 




OBIN is a pet name for Robert, and the name 
Robert means, according to the dictionary, 
"bright in fame," or bright and famous. So 
you see the robin's name describes him, for 
he is one of our most famous birds, even if he is not one of our 
brightest. 

The robin would be known as a dull-colored bird. It is true 
that the males have a rich salmon-colored breast, and that 
they are sometimes referred to as robin red-breast, but taken 
as a whole the robin is dull colored. The English robin red- 
breast is a much redder bird than ours. 

That is one reason why a robin does not have to be so careful 
about concealing its nest — because it is dull colored. The 
bright-colored birds, like the oriole, have to conceal their nests, 
otherwise when they are sitting upon the nest they could be 
easily seen by their enemies. But the back of a robin being 



30 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

dark, she can sit upon her nest and even a boy may pass right 
by without observing it. 

The robin belongs to the thrush family and there are more 
than a hundred kinds of thrushes. All of them have soft bills, 
with nostrils covered by a membrane, at the base of the bill, and 
nearly all thrushes can sing. 

The robin builds a substantial nest. It first lays a foundation 
of mud, generally in the forks of limbs, and then it lays some 
coarse sticks or straws and places mud over them, and then 
strings or fibers, all the time plastering the nest with soft mud 
that holds like cement. 

The inside of the nest is filled with soft grasses and threads 
and hairs and feathers, and when it is completed it forms a 
perfectly round cup. A robin has no compass to work with, 
and no plans to go by, but man himself could not build a nest 
more scientifically round. The bird is able to get the nest 
round by getting on the inside as she builds and turning 
round and round and thus shaping it with her breast. 

A robin lays four eggs, of a pale-blue color, without spots upon 
them. Birds whose nests are exposed lay colored eggs, and 
birds that conceal their nests lay white eggs, or eggs with only 




a 'S 



J 



THE ROBIN 31 



splotches upon them. If a robin laid white eggs, don't you 
understand that they would be easily seen when the bird is not 
upon the nest? But with those beautifully tinted, soft blue 
eggs — they are not so noticeable as white ones would be. A 
flicker doesn't have to waste any Easter dyes upon her eggs, 
because they are inside of a tree, but a robin goes into the egg- 
coloring business. 

During the summer the robins are quite tame. They have 
learned that people do not harm them at that time of the year. 
But as soon at the weather gets cold the robins become wild and 
go to the fields, and prepare for their southern journey. 

People used to hunt robins and shoot them and eat them, and 
that made the robin shy in the fall and winter. There are still 
thousands and thousands of them shot for food, especially in 
the South — and a robin tastes pretty good, too, to a fellow who 
does not object to eating his friends. 

People who talk about the rollicking life of a bird do not 
know much about birds. Birds are not in business just for the 
fun of it — any more than anybody else. They have to make 
their own living and sometimes that is pretty hard even for a 
bird to do. They have to build their own homes and bring up 



32 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

their young. They have to watch everything and everybody — 
the boys and the cats and the dogs, and snakes, and other birds. 
They lead busy lives and if one finds time occasionally to sit 
upon a limb and sing for us, well and good. But they are in no 
sense idlers. 

The male bird sings for the benefit of his sweetheart, or out of 
vanity. Generally he gets out where he can be seen, when he 
warbles, and it seems that he sings to attract attention to himself 
as much as for anything else. Perhaps he wants to make his 
wife feel glad that she married him, so she can fly over to a 
neighbor's and tell her what a beautiful voice her husband has, 
and thus make the other bird envious. The robin doesn't sing 
after his family is grown; he sings only in the spring and summer. 

If a mother robin is killed after the young ones are hatched, 
the father bird will feed the children and bring them up, but if 
the mother bird disappears before the eggs are hatched the 
male will sit upon the nest but a day or so and when he finds 
his mate is not going to return he deserts the nest. 

Robins, as a rule, take a new mate every spring, but there are 
exceptions to the rule. One pair of robins has been known to 
return year after year for three or four years, but usually the 



THE ROBIN 33 



pair of robins that builds in your yard this year is not the pair 
that built there last year. It is pretty hard for one to keep up 
with one's mate in a big crowd and on a long march like the 
robins make every fall, and while we believe that all robins get 
along peacefully when mated, it may be that during the festival 
they have in the palm groves of the South, some of the robins 
desert their mates and take new ones just for fun. 




THE HUMMING BIRD 




MflflffK^sS 



CHAPTER VI 

THE HUMMING BIRD 

iHERE are more than four hundred varieties of 
humming birds, divided into three great 
families — the wedge-tailed humming birds, 
the curved-billed humming birds and the 
straight-billed humming birds. The most numerous family in 
this country is the straight-billed fellows, and there are some 
fifty varieties of it. 

The humming bird is an easy one to study, after you know it 
and its ways. That is, it is easy to study if you know how to 
study it. If you will take your position by the side of a flower 
bush of some kind and stand perfectly still, the humming birds 
will come within two or three feet of you and may be easily 
seen. Frequently they will alight upon a branch right by your 
side and you can watch them brush up their feathers and wipe 
the honey off of their bills and primp up just like girls getting 
ready for a party, 



38 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

It is a mistake to suppose that humming birds visit flowers 
only for the honey they find in the flowers. They do eat the 
honey they find, and are very fond of it, but what they really 
go to flowers for is for the purpose of gathering the little insects 
that get into the flowers. They have probably learned to like 
the honey by swallowing insects that are covered with it, for 
many insects actually drown in the sweet syrup found in 
flowers. 

The humming bird has a long thread-like tongue, with barbs 
upon it. The bird can send its tongue down into the heart of 
a morning-glory and the small bugs and gnats that may have 
gotten into the flower are easily brought up and eaten by the 
bird. 

The bill of the humming bird has a hole in the end of it, too, 
and is used as a boy uses a straw in drinking soda water. It can 
stick the bill down into a flower and suck out every particle of 
sweetness that is in there. 

The humming bird builds the tiniest little nest that a boy 
ever saw. It is about an inch across and an inch deep and as 
delicately woven as a piece of silk. It is lined with the softest 
of downy stuff and there isn't a rough place in it. In this nest 



THE HUMMING BIRD 39 

the bird lays only one or two eggs, as she does not desire a large 
family. 

When it is first hatched, a humming bird is no larger than the 
first joint of a baby's little finger, and is as much like a 
worm as anything else. The egg is about the size of a pea and 
hatches in ten or twelve days. 

The humming bird is our most artistically colored bird. 
One great man has referred to it as a "glittering fragment of 
the rainbow," and that comes very nearly describing it. Along 
its back it is a beautiful metallic green, while around its throat 
is a collar of ruby red, tapering off into white. The female does 
not wear the ruby collar. 

The lower part of the back tones down from the metallic 
green to a brownish violet. The whole appearance of the bird 
is that of polished steel whose hues have been fastened by fire 
— burnished until it glistens in the sun. It is easy to tell the 
male from the female by the fact that the tail of the male is 
forked, while that of the female is rounded. 

It can fly so rapidly that its course cannot be followed, and 
yet it can poise in the air and seem to stand fixed against the 
background of the scene. It moves its wings so rapidly that it 



40 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

produces a humming sound, from which it gets its name, and 
when it hovers over a flower near you the wings appear as a 
halo about the bird. 

The humming bird, small as it is, is a game little fighter, and 
can chase a hawk away from its nest. Often when you hear 
an old crow carrying on it is because one of these little streaks 
of color is after him. It has been known to attack boys who 
were fooling around its nest. 




THE BLUE JAY 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BLUE JAY 




THE blue jay is a terror to the other birds, and 
does not receive any credit for the good it 



actually does. That may be because he does 
not know that he is doing any good. If he 
did he probably wouldn't do it, because he is a rascally fel- 
low and is never so happy as when getting somebody into 
trouble. 

One of the worst things charged up against the jay is that he 
robs other birds' nests and eats the eggs. He is a natural-born 
scrapper, as the boys would say, and delights in a fight, and is a 
loud-mouthed, arrogant bird that wants everybody in the woods 
to know exactly where he is. And right there is where he does 
something for the other birds and animals of the forest. 

When a jay discovers a snake or a hawk or a crow, or anything 
that might do harm to the other things that live in the wood, 
he screams and yells and carries on at a great rate. The other 



44 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

birds have learned that and when they hear the jay fussing 
they get out of the way. 

A man may be sneaking through the woods very softly,, trying 
to get within range of a squirrel, when a jay discovers him. 
Then the bird begins squalling at the top of his voice and the 
squirrel runs and hides. In that way he befriends the squirrel, 
of course, and it is possible that is why Nature gave the jay 
a disposition to quarrel and to make a to-do over everything 
and everybody. 

The jay loves to stir up trouble. It can imitate a number 
of birds, especially several kinds of hawks. It will get around 
where a lot of birds are enjoying themselves and screech like 
a hawk just to see the other birds scatter and hunt for cover. 
Then the jay flies up into the branches of a tall tree and yells 
and hollers and it is no trouble to imagine that he is shaking 
his sides in laughter. 

But he is a beauty in coloring and as he stays with us all 
winter, he adds cheerfulness to the landscape when everything 
looks dead and dreary. His general color is light purplish blue, 
the underparts whitish, and he wears a half collar or crescent 
of black. There are black bands on the wings and tail, and 




11 



BLUE JAY. 

(Cyanocitta cristata). 
I Life-size. 



COPYRIGHT AND PUBLISHED BY 
ATKINSON, MENTZEH & GROVER, CHICAGO 



THE BLUE JAY 



45 



there are. white bars. A single feather from the tail or wing of 
the jay affords an interesting study in coloring. 

The jay builds a substantial nest of sticks and straw, lined 
with fiber and down, and lays from five to seven eggs, of a pale 
bluish green, with little freckles upon them. 




THE REDBIRD OR CARDINAL 




CHAPTER VIII 

THE REDBIRD OR CARDINAL 

HE redbird, as we know him, is the cardinal 
or cardinal grosbeak, and he belongs to the 
finch family. He has a short, hard bill, and 
can crack a grain of corn or bite the blood out 
of a boy's finger with it. 

The male is bright vermilion red, and has a fierce looking 
topknot and a red bill to match his suit. The female is 
more of an olive above, the underparts having a yellowish 
tinge. While it can stand a good deal of cold weather and is 
a hardy bird in all respects, it seems to prefer the southern 
countries, and drifts south in the fall. 

While the tune the cardinal sings is short, its clear, piping 
notes are sweet and pure. When it sings it likes to sit upon the 
very tiptop of a tall tree and its ringing tones can be heard for a 
long distance. It begins singing early in the spring and keeps 



50 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

it up until along in September, after most birds have stopped 
singing. 

The weather does not affect the redbird's song. Few birds 
like to sing in gloomy weather, but a redbird seems to defy the 
elements and frequently when it is dark and cloudy he can be 
heard piercing the air with his melody. 

You would hardly think that the shy, silent, dull-colored 
female flitting about on the ground or in the briars close to the 
ground, was the wife of the proud fellow in the top of the tree. 
She never flies up and sits beside her mate when he is singing, 
apparently being quite content to let him have all of the glory 
as she modestly remains in obscurity. 

The cardinal lays four eggs of a dullish-white color, covered 
with tawny spots. It builds its nest in thorny bushes or briars, 
and is very jealous of its young. The male cardinals fight each 
other desperately, and have been known to kill one another. 

In the South the redbird, on account of its brilliant color, is 
frequently kept in cages. Boys go out and find a redbird's 
nest and keep an eye upon it until the young birds are hatched. 
Then they take the nest and put it in a cage and leave the door 
open so the old birds can enter the cage and feed the young ones, 



THE REDBIRD OR CARDINAL 



51 



which they will readily do. When the birds get so large that 
there is danger of their getting out of the cage, the boys close 
the door and the old birds will continue to feed the young ones 
through the bars until they are old enough to be fed by anybody. 




THE SWALLOW 



CHAPTER IX 




THE SWALLOW 

tHE most graceful bird that flies is the swallow. 
There are many varieties of them, but all of 
them can be readily distinguished by their 
motion and speed. They easily cover sixty 
miles an hour and while going at their best speed they make 
seventy to seventy-five miles an hour with little effort. 

The bill of the swallow is short and weak and broad at the 
base. They gather their food while flying. So accurate are 
they in flight and sight that they have no trouble in nabbing 
insects as they sail through the air. 

And you can tell where the insects are by the flight of the 
swallows. On bright days you will find the swallows flying 
high in the air. That shows the insects are up there. Toward 
dusk, or when the air is moist and heavy, the insects keep close 
to the earth, and then you will see the swallows scooting along 
a few feet above the tops of the weeds or the streets. 



56 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

It is a pretty sight to stand by a river and watch them. You 
will note that they can drink as they sail along the surface of 
the water, and every little while you may see one dip lightly 
into the water in order to get a bath. There are also many 
insects that fly above the surface of the streams and the swallows 
pick them up by the mouthful. 

The chimney swallow, or chimney sweep, as it is often known, 
builds its nest on the inside of chimneys. It secures its nest to 
the side of the bricks, after thoroughly cleaning them, by means 
of gum which it gathers from trees. The peach tree furnishes 
an excellent glue for the birds. Into the gum the swallows weave 
little sticks until it forms a shelf -like nest that sticks out four or 
five inches. A number of swallows often build nests in the 
same chimney. 

The chimney swallow lays four to six eggs. They are long 
and white with reddish brown spots upon them. The chimney 
swallows raise two sets of young each season, in the same nest, 
but in the event the weather turns cold before the second brood 
is large enough to fly, the parents may abandon the young ones 
and leave them to starve to death, while themselves hurrying 
southward. When it turns cool the insects no longer fly about 



THE SWALLOW 57 



in the air and a swallow would starve to death if it could not 
catch its food while on the wing, for, owing to the great length 
of its wings and its short legs, it cannot get about on the ground 
to gather food. 

The swallows migrate for longer distances than any other 
bird. Those that visit England every summer spend the winter 
away down in Africa, coming up the coast in the spring and 
crossing the channel with ease. Many of the swallows that 
spend the summer in the United States spend the winter in 
the extreme southern part of South America or in the West 
Indies. 

The martin is a species of the swallow, and there are a 
number of varieties. One kind of martin makes its nest by 
boring a round hole in river banks, up above where a boy 
can climb. Another kind of martin builds its nest under the 
eaves of houses or beneath bridges or in the lofts of barns. 
These latter nests are made of mud and are quite substantial 
structures. 

One of the interesting sights in connection with swallows is 
to watch them feed their young while "on the wing." The 
young bird soon learns to fly, but it takes time to become 



58 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

expert at catching bugs. The parent bird will take the young 
ones out for a little exercise or a lesson in flying, and every little 
while you may notice the old bird sail up to the side of a young 
one and "hand" it a bug or beetle without interfering with the 
flight of the youngster. 

In the fall when the swallows are getting ready to migrate, 
they have a great time. They get together in droves and sail 
round and round, chirping and carrying on at a great rate. 
They visit the various chimneys in which the members of the 
party have lived during the summer, as if they were paying a 
farewell visit to the old home. It is not unusual for a thousand 
swallows to enter a chimney at one time, descending into it in 
a steady stream until it would seem to be full of birds, and then 
rising out of the chimney like smoke and going to another one. 
Next morning early, after such a performance, the band starts 
south, flying pretty high. It will travel for six hundred or a 
thousand miles without stopping, spend a day or two, and take 
up the journey for another like distance. 

Swallows return to the same chimney in which they were 
hatched, if possible. Just how they are able to make their way 
from a place in the far South to the identical house in which 



THE SWALLOW 



59 



they were hatched, it would be difficult to say, but they do it. 
So that next spring you may expect to see flying around your 
home the identical swallows that were this year brought up in 
your chimney. 




BIRD MIGRATION 




CHAPTER X 

BIRD MIGRATION 

PORTSMEN sometimes say that it is a good 
time to hunt snipe and ducks right after a 
storm, because they "come in" during storms. 
Now, that is not exactly correct. It is this 
way: The snipe and ducks are making their way to the North, 
in the spring, and when they encounter a cold wave or a severe 
storm they will stop. Sometimes they may be driven back 
southward. That is why in many sections of the country they 
can be found after or during storms. 

In the fall they are making their way to the South. If there 
is a heavy storm in the far North it naturally drives them south, 
and the sportsman takes his gun and goes to the marshes and 
lakes that have known no wild water-fowl during the heated 
period. 

Birds cannot tell for any considerable length of time in ad- 
vance what kind of weather we are going to have, but they can 



64 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

undoubtedly tell a few days in advance. Birds frequently get 
caught by not knowing that it is going to turn cold. Do you 
suppose that if a bird knew we were going to have freezing 
weather in April she would lay her eggs and hatch her young 
and have the young birds die from cold? That happens at 
times. Then, if a quail knew the spring and summer were to 
be wet and rainy she would not build her nest in a low, damp 
place or in a river bottom and have her young perish. That 
also happens quite frequently. 

Bluebirds come north two or four or six together. They 
start early and make their way slowly, picking along twenty or 
thirty miles a day and sometimes spending a week in one neigh- 
borhood. 

Robins and meadow larks start out in droves — robins in larger 
droves than the larks — and travel north pretty rapidly, flying 
for several hours at a time and then settling down in the fields 
and feeding for a day or two. Lots of robins spend the winter 
as far north as Kentucky. Very few robins spend the summer 
as far south as Tennessee. The boys who live in parts of 
Tennessee seldom see a robin except in the fall and spring. 

The palm groves of Florida and the forests along the south- 



BIRD MIGRATION 65 

eastern coasts, down around Georgia and the Carolinas, are 
literally alive with robins in the winter. They go as far north 
as Maine and New Brunswick and across southern Canada. 

The wild goose is a splendid specimen of the migratory bird. 
He spends the winter in the far South, as far away as Central 
and South America, and when he starts north he goes like a 
train. The goose flies about sixty miles an hour and can keep 
it up for ten hours or more at a stretch. 

But geese do not leave their Southern homes and go directly 
to their Northern homes. They visit casually along the way. 
They may travel two or three hundred miles in a straight line 
and then alight and spend a week in one vicinity. 

Because the goose does a good deal of its traveling at night 
and in flocks or droves, it makes a noise as it flies. Birds that 
migrate singly or in pairs and in the daytime make no noise 
when flying, but birds that travel as the goose does have a call 
which they repeat frequently so that the gang may remain 
together. 

When a flock of geese gets ready to start north in the spring 
they circle around and around over the lake where they have 
spent the winter. When they start on their journey the flock 



66 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

forms two lines, coming together at a point like the letter "V." 
They are about three feet behind each other and it is said that 
their formation enables them to go through the air with the 
least resistance. 

An old bird always flies at the head of the "V," and con- 
stantly gives the signal, "honk, honk." The geese behind him 
respond, one at a time, "honk, honk," to let him know that the 
others are coming. If the flock becomes disorganized at night, 
as sometimes happens when it encounters a heavy gale, it will 
alight and spend the night on the ground and take up its forma- 
tion again next morning. 

As a rule, migratory birds know the direction of the compass; 
that is, they can go straight north and south without varying 
any. But sometimes they lose their bearings and do not seem 
to know which is north and which is south. A gang of wild 
geese or cranes — cranes make a lot of noise when they are 
traveling — when it becomes lost will awaken people by their 
noise. The gangs have been known to fly two hundred miles 
out of their way before they could get straightened out. 

All water-fowls are, of course, migratory birds. They could 
not live in the North where the lakes and rivers freeze. All 



BIRD MIGRATION 



67 



soft-billed birds also have to leave the North when winter comes. 
Birds have no regular time for starting north or south, but are 
governed by the weather, remaining in the North much later 
in the fall if there are no storms. 




THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 




CHAPTER XI 

THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 

F ever you run upon a bird that is nearly all 
mouth and no bill hardly at all, that is a whip- 
poor-will. They have only a little stubby 
bill, but when they open their mouths wide it 
is bigger than their heads. But it isn't any too big, for the 
whip-poor-will has to catch its food on the wing and all birds 
of that kind need large mouths. 

Around the mouth of the whip-poor-will are a lot of bristles 
that are stiff and hard. That is part of its hunting outfit. 
When the bird flies at a bug and misses it an inch or so the 
bristles strike it and it isn't any trouble then for the bird to 
catch the crippled bug. 

Over in England they call the whip-poor-will a goatsucker. 
That comes about because folks used to think the bird sucked 
the milk of goats, but it does not. In other countries it is called 
chuckwilPs widow, because that is what many people suppose 
the bird says, but in most parts of the United States people 



72 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

understand it to say "whip-poor-will," with the accent on the 
"poor" and "will." 

The whip-poor-will is so nearly like the night hawks which 
you see flying around in the sky about sunset that many people 
get them confused. They are very closely related and their 
habits are much alike, but you will see ten night hawks to one 
whip-poor-will. 

Both have long, well-shaped wings and light bodies covered 
with feathers much softer than most birds have, and they fly 
swiftly and gracefully. Occasionally you may see one flying 
high in the air, suddenly take a swoop downward and go 
"wonk" as he drops. That is a night hawk. 

The whip-poor-will sings only at night, and only when the 
weather is clear. His whole song is made up of his name — 
whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, repeated over 
and over in a shrill, piercing voice. 

One of the funny things about a whip-poor-will is that it 
doesn't sit upon a fence or limb like any other bird. It always 
sits lengthwise, while other birds sit cross-wise. The whip- 
poor-will has a broad, spreading foot with short toes and it does 
not grip a twig or branch as do other birds. 



THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 73 

You need not hunt for a whip-poor-will's nest, because you 
can't find one. They don't make nests. They lay two ugly 
eggs upon the bare ground and sit upon them until they are 
hatched — which is about fourteen days. The eggs are nearly 
as round as marbles, a dirty greenish white in color and splotched 
over with blotches of bluish gray. 

If a boy gets around where a whip-poor-will is sitting upon 
her eggs and she comes to the conclusion that he is getting too 
friendly with her, she will take the eggs in her mouth — one at 
a time, of course — and fly over to some other field and put 
them on the ground and take up her business of hatching them. 
They have been known to move their eggs half-a-dozen times. 
That is one advantage of not having a home — it isn't any trouble 
to move when things go wrong. 

And not only will the whip-poor-will move her eggs, but she 
will move the young birds the same way if she is disturbed. 
Her mouth is so large she can pick up one of the young birds 
without injuring it. 

The whip-poor-will doesn't make any noise as it flies because 
its feathers are so soft. The birds whose feathers are hard are 
the ones that make the noise when they fly. A quail makes a 



74 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

lot of noise when it flies, and its feathers are nearly all 
harsh. 

It is pretty hard to describe the coloring of the whip-poor-will, 
further than to say it is mottled. It is tawny grayish in general 
color, and has bars upon its head and throat. As it flies over 
you, you can see beautiful white stripes across the underside of 
the wings as is the case with the night hawk. The male has, 
considerable white in the tail, but the female has none. 




THE CROW 




CHAPTER XII 

THE CROW 

ROWS can't count. They do not know any- 
thing whatever about arithmetic. Very few 
birds do, but a crow is so smart in other 
respects it does seem that he ought to know 
that one and one make two or that one from two leaves one — 
but he doesn't. 

A farmer made a shanty in his corn field and hid in it in 
order to kill the crows that came to get the seed out of the 
ground. The crows watched him go into the shanty and so 
long as he remained there not a crow would alight anywhere 
near it. But just as soon as he went away from the shanty the 
crows alighted in great numbers all about it. 

One day the farmer took a friend to the shanty with him, 
and the two remained there for a few minutes. Then the 
farmer left the place and the crows that had been sitting around 
waiting for him to leave could not figure it up and tell that 



78 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

there was still one man in the shanty. They immediately 
alighted about the place and the second man shot many of 
them. 

Among all species of birds that are black it occasionally hap- 
pens that there is hatched a white one. There is not a light- 
colored feather upon a crow, as a rule, and yet occasionally a 
white one, or albino, as it is called, is seen. These white ones 
are short-lived, however, and their children, if they have any, 
are not white. 

The crow is a well-formed, graceful fellow, with stout legs 
and claws and bill. He walks well, but slowly, and has a keen 
eye. He is suspicious of people, because everybody has taken 
a shot at him whenever he came within range. He builds his 
nest in a deep wood, high up in the top of a tree, and if a boy 
finds it and climbs up to it, the crow will desert the nest and 
build another. He does not want to take any chances after he 
discovers that his nest has been located by a boy. 

So keen is a crow's eye and so good his memory that if a boy 
should climb up to his nest during the absence of the bird, the 
crow would know it. He could tell from the appearance of 
the bark and the twigs about the nest that some one had been 



THE CROW 79 



there, and he would notify his wife and they would never again 
visit that nest. 

The crow pretends to have a very high standard of morals, 
but he is a rascal just the same. He hates an owl or hawk and 
will make all manner of trouble for them, but he does the same 
things owls and hawks do — robs other birds' nests and kills and 
eats helpless little things. No young bird is safe around where 
a crow is unless its parents are present. 

Although the crow will pull up young corn to get at the sprout- 
ing grain, and thus do much damage to the farmer's crop, he does 
more good than he does harm and it is a mistake to make war 
upon him. In the course of a day a crow will kill thousands 
of bugs and beetles and worms, and even mice and moles, that 
would eat ten times as much of the crops as he destroys. 

When crows are feeding upon the ground you will always see 
a sentinel sitting high upon a rail or in the top of a tree ready 
to give the alarm when any one starts in that direction. It is 
hard to get a good shot at a crow for that reason. 

After the young ones are grown in the fall, the crows get 
together in droves and make their way to the South. That 
is when they are noisest. Early in the morning when the 



80 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



gang starts to the feeding ground — and they usually roost some 
distance from where they feed — they make more noise than a 
lot of boys when school is out. And it is the same late in the 
afternoon when they are returning to the roost. All crows do 
not go South in winter, a few of them remaining in states as far 
north as Michigan. 




THE PIGEON 




CHAPTER XIII 

THE PIGEON 

JGEONS do not feed their young the same way 
other birds feed their young. You do not 
find the pigeons carrying things to their nests 
for their children the first week or ten days 
that the little fellows are lying helpless in their nest of sticks and 
straws — a mighty poor nest, too, unless it is inside of a box. 

Pigeons feed their young upon a sort of curd which rises in 
the throat of the parent birds, both male and female. A milk- 
like substance gathers in the enlarged glands about the crops of 
the old birds, and at intervals this substance is disgorged and 
fed to the young birds. 

All of our tame pigeons came from the wild rock pigeon. 
There are now hundreds of varieties of tame pigeons and a num- 
ber of varieties of wild pigeons, but learned men are able to 
trace all of them back to the wild rock pigeon. Turtledoves 
are closely related to the rock pigeon. 



84 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

Ever notice a pigeon drinking? Well, it doesn't drink like 
other birds. A robin dips its bill into the water and then holds 
up its head and swallows. A pigeon sticks its bill deep into the 
water and drinks all it wants without raising its head. 

A turtledove — and nearly all pigeons — lays two eggs and both 
ends are rounded exactly alike. Nearly all other birds' eggs are 
pointed more at one end than the other. The eggs of the dove 
are pure white, notwithstanding she does not conceal her nest, but 
they are never left exposed, one bird taking the place of the other 
when it becomes necessary for one of them to leave the nest. 

There are several varieties of what is called the turtledove, 
but the one most familiar to people in the central part of the 
United States is the Carolina dove. In the fall of the year and 
during the winter they get together in great droves and feed about 
the stubble fields and cornfields, and even about the barnyard, 
but in many localities they are hunted for their flesh and then 
they become wild. 

The old gentleman with the gray head can tell you all about 
the great droves of wild pigeons, or passenger pigeons, that used 
to migrate north during the spring and south during the fall. 
There would be thousands and thousands of them in one flock, 



THE PIGEON 85 



darkening the sky as they passed over. They fed upon acorns 
and had a certain piece of timber in which they would roost, and 
they would gather at the roost in such numbers that they would 
break the limbs off of trees and could be killed with sticks and 
clubs. 

The passenger pigeons built their nests in the northern part 
of the United States and in southern Canada, and they nested 
in communities. That is, a whole flock would nest in one small 
strip of woods. For that reason they were easily slaughtered 
by persons who hunted them for the market. There was a big 
demand for the squabs and men made a business of taking the 
young birds from the nests. It did not take many years to 
destroy all of the great droves that at one time were so common. 

Had they scattered out and built their nests over a large area 
of country, they could never have been entirely exterminated. 
But they liked to nest in great neighborhoods, so that they were 
an easy prey to men as soon as there was a market for them. 

One of the favorite ways of taking the passenger pigeons was 
by means of a net. Men would construct a great net like a fish 
seine and lay it upon the ground. A few of the pigeons would 
be caught and tied to stakes so they could not fly away. The 



86 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

flocks flying over would see the decoy birds feeding upon the 
ground and alight upon the net, when it would be sprung by 
persons concealed in the bushes, and thousands of the birds 
would sometimes be captured at one time. 

When pigeons mate they mate for keeps, as the boys would 
say. They are not so fickle as some birds that change their 
mates every spring. They are sensible folks and devoted to 
each other. It is a pleasing sight to watch the old male bird 
carrying food to the mistress of the home as she sits upon the 
eggs. And then, just to show what a dutiful wife she is, the 
female will take her husband a fine, big grain of corn when she 
returns to take his place upon the nest. 

Because of the short legs and the large breast a pigeon walks 
proudly, the graceful neck moving backward and forward with 
each step. Where they are not disturbed they grow as tame as 
chickens, and as they bring up many broods during the course 
of a year they multiply rapidly. Although their flesh is dark, 
it is rather tender and makes good food, and the young birds, 
called squabs, are in demand. 

And did you know that a pigeon has little cushions upon the 
underside of every one of its toes, so that it can walk softly? 



THE KINGFISHER 




CHAPTER XIV 

THE KINGFISHER 

iHERE are several kinds of kingfishers, but ours 
is called the belted kingfisher — and he is. His 
general appearance is light blue, with white 
stripes, his sides being the same color as the 
back. There are also black stripes upon him, and the topknot 
he wears gives him a savage, arrogant appearance. 

As he is a fisherman, you will, of course, find him about the 
water. He likes still water best, an old mill pond suiting him 
to a dot. He flies up and down the rivers and creeks, close to 
the water, and he has such a good eye and is so quick that you 
may see him dip into the water and catch a small fish while 
flying twenty-five miles an hour. 

In this country we do not pay much attention to the king- 
fisher, but in some, countries he is a very important bird and is 
spoken of with awe. We know him only as a clever fisherman, 
building a home in the bank of a river, as do some swallows, 



90 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

and darting here and there after a minnow, but it is different in 
other places. 

The ancients called the kingfisher the halcyon, and they 
believed all manner of things about him. They believed he 
could calm the sea during the storm, and because during the 
days the kingfisher or halcyon was nesting the sea was likely 
to be smooth and placid, those ancients got to talking about 
"the halcyon days," days that were peaceful and pleasant and 
mild. 

Even to this day in parts of France you can hear some strange 
things about the kingfisher. Many people believe that if you 
will take a dead kingfisher and suspend it by the bill, that the 
breast will always point to the north. Other folks say that if 
you will take a kingfisher and tie a string around its body and 
suspend it from the ceiling, that the bill will point the direction 
from which the wind is blowing, even though no wind strikes 
the bird. Still other superstitious people believe that if one 
will tie a piece of the breast of a kingfisher about his neck he 
will not drown, and there are those who carry the feathers 
of a kingfisher in their pockets to insure them luck. 

The favorite perch of the kingfisher is upon a dead snag that 




17 



KINGFISHER. 

(Ceryle alcyon). 

| Life-size. 



^UMFORD, CHICAGO 



THE KINGFISHER 



91 



overlooks the water. There he will sit motionless and peer 
into the stream for some minutes. Finally you will see him 
dart at the surface of the water like a blue streak, and arise 
with a fish. He flies back to his perch and eats it, or takes it 
to his children six feet back in a hole where he has hollowed 
out a fine nest. 




THE COWBIRD 




CHAPTER XV 

THE COWBIRD 

OWBIRDS are a little smaller than the black- 
birds, but to the fellow who is going along and 
attending to his business and not paying much 
attention to things, these cowbirds are only 
blackbirds. They are a dull black, with a chocolate under- 
part, and do not glisten in the sunshine like the blackbirds. 

The reason they are called cowbirds is because they like to 
be around the cattle. They alight upon the backs of cattle 
and pick out the ticks and other insects. Often you may see 
an old cow grazing peacefully with a cowbird hunting ticks 
on her back. 

Then a cow knocks down a great many flies with her tail and 
the cowbird knows it. They follow along by the side of the 
cow and get the wounded flies that fall from the sides of the 
cow after a swish of her tail. 



96 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

Cowbirds are all orphans in one sense of the word. They 
do not build nests nor mate as do other birds. They always 
live in flocks and are never "paired off." 

The female eowbird steals into another bird's nest and lays 
an egg and goes away and pays no further attention to it. The 
other bird does all the work of hatching and feeding the young 
eowbird. It is not unusual to see a beautiful yellowbird or a 
sparrow bringing up a black, awkward eowbird along with her 
own, or, perhaps by itself. 

The egg of the eowbird hatches sooner than does the egg of 
yellowbird or sparrow, and thus it may happen that the yellow- 
bird or sparrow, when the cowbird's egg hatches, leaves the 
nest to get food for the young one, and her own eggs thereby 
become chilled and do not hatch. In a few cases birds in 
whose nests the eowbird has laid an egg, have gone to work 
and built another bottom to the nest, covering up the eowbird 
egg so that it would not hatch. 

Of course it is not fair for a eowbird to act that way, but 
they do not seem to care. Nor do they seem to care for the 
bird that brings them up. Just as soon as a eowbird gets big 
enough to hustle for itself, it leaves its foster parents and does 



THE COWBIRD 97 



not pay any more attention to them. It gets with a gang of its 
fellows and next summer sneaks off and lays an egg in some 
other bird's nest- — maybe in the nest of the very bird that 
brought it up. 

The cowbird migrates in the late fall, usually going to some 
southern marsh or swamp. They live in communities winter 
and summer. Because they do not have wives and sweethearts 
they do not fight each other. Jealousy causes a lot of the trouble 
among birds just as it does among people, but the cowbird has 
no jealousy about him and he has no home to protect. He 
does not sing, but has a sharp, muttery sort of warble which he 
utters when the drove is flying around, especially toward evening 
when his bedtime is approaching. 




THE ENGLISH SPARROW 




CHAPTER XVI 

THE ENGLISH SPARROW 

iHE English sparrow was brought to this country 
in 1850 by Nicholas Pike and other directors 
of the Brooklyn Institute, as an experiment. 
Other birds were becoming scarce in Brooklyn, 
and those gentlemen thought it would be a good idea to get 
some of the sparrows from London. Later another lot of the 
birds were imported and turned loose in the parks of Philadel- 
phia. You know the rest. 

We already had in this country thirty or forty kinds of spar- 
rows, some of them lovable birds, and one or two kinds singing 
to some extent, but since the English sparrows became numerous, 
one has to go to the country to find the other kinds of sparrows, 
and even out there they are not so plentiful as they once were. 
The English sparrow is a rugged little villain. He drives 
other birds out of the city whenever he can and he generally 
can if the birds are not too large. He has driven out nearly all 

LOT* 



102 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

of the little wrens that used to build their nests under pans that 
were set upon a shelf, or in the cracks of the foundation of the 
house, or about the stable — wherever a few sticks and straws 
could find lodgment. 

In place of the wrens we now have the sparrows filling rain 
troughs with straw, cramming gutters full of litter, crowding 
the vines with the trash they gather, and rearing their young by 
the half-dozen in all sorts of holes and crevices. 

It is said that in the whole city of London there is not a single 
space in which a bird could build a nest but is occupied by a 
pair of sparrows, and that thousands of the birds are compelled 
to forego the pleasure of bringing up a family because they 
cannot find a place in which to build a nest. 

While most people consider the English sparrow a nuisance, 
it may be that he is not as bad as he is pictured. Everything 
that is of any account is some trouble, and it is quite likely that 
the sparrows pay us for the trouble they put us to. While they 
eat a good deal of grain, and damage property to some extent, 
they certainly destroy millions of the eggs of ants and kill a 
great many insects. Let a gang of sparrows discover an ant's 
nest in the grass and you will find that they are not long in 



THE ENGLISH SPARROW 103 

digging out and carrying off every one of the small white eggs 
that would soon be ants. 

Then, while the voice of the sparrow is not soft and sweet and 
mellow like the voice of most birds, it must be admitted that in 
the cold, gloomy weather of winter, when there is not another 
bird in sight or sound, it is a pleasant thing to watch a gang of 
sparrows feeding in the streets, trying with all their little mights 
to get a living from the ice- and snow-covered pavements. 

There is something about a sparrow that every boy ought to 
admire. Everything and everybody is its enemy. It is not 
even against the law to kill it. Folks hate it and chase it 
out of the vines; cats lie in wait for it; boys throw stones 
at it and shoot at it with air rifles. And yet it stands its 
ground and increases in numbers and chatters and chirrups 
and fusses and lets you know that it is here to stay. That 
quality of the English sparrow is worth something. It shows 
what may be accomplished with the whole world against you 
if you only have the courage to fight it out. 

It is not necessary to describe the sparrow; everybody knows 
him. It is the male that wears the black collar, and this male 
makes a pretty good sort of a husband. He will bring up his 



104 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

family in case a boy kills the mother bird and he will fight any- 
thing that tries to break up his nest. 

Out in the country where there is not so much soot and dirt, 
the English sparrow is not so dull colored as in the city. He is 
rather prettily marked with his somber hues, but you can't 
expect much of a bird that has to wallow around in the dirty 
dust of a smoky city. 




THE QUAIL 




CHAPTER XVII 

THE QUAIL 

THE quail is one of the most valuable of our birds. 
Its flesh is the finest food. It destroys more 



insects than any other bird, possibly. It is 
beautifully proportioned, and hardy. It mul- 
tiplies rapidly, and its habits are such that it is the ideal game 
bird. It furnishes the highest grade of sport to those who have 
no scruples about shooting game. It flourishes in cultivated 
sections of the country more than it does in the wilder regions, 
and does not, therefore, become extinct through civilization. 

The Bob-white is the male quail — so-called because of his 
clear, ringing notes which seem to be a repetition of the words. 
The female never whistles "Bob White," so that whenever you 
hear the words you may know they come from a white-throated 
male. The female wears a yellowish throat; otherwise the 
male and female are marked very much alike. 

The quail "scratches for a living." Its toes are formed for 



108 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

digging in the earth and it has a good, stout bill. Its legs are 
set upon the body for running purposes, and while it flies 
swiftly, it runs and walks a good deal more than it flies. 
Unless it is frightened it may go for days and days without 
rising from the ground. 

During the fall and winter, the quail lives in coveys of from 
eight to twenty. They feed together and roost together and get 
along nicely as one peaceful family. At night they gather be- 
neath the shelter of a drooping bunch of grass or w r eeds and sit 
with their heads pointing outward. A dozen quail will roost 
in a space no larger than a plate. 

In the early spring they mate. It is said that the males strut 
before the females, making as grand appearance as possible, 
occasionally fighting each other just to show their bravery, and 
the female selects her mate after reviewing the parade. 

As soon as they are mated, they leave the covey and proceed 
to housekeeping. The quail nests in the grass. The nest is 
well concealed and one may pass within a foot of it without 
discovering it. In this nest, anywhere from twelve to twenty 
pure white eggs are laid, the male and the female taking turns 
at sitting upon them until they are hatched. 



THE QUAIL 109 



Where there are fifteen or twenty children in a family it would 
be impossible for a pair of old birds to carry food enough for 
all of them. That is why the birds that are helpless when they 
are hatched come in twos or fours — rarely ever more than six 
— to a nest. But the quail is not helpless at any time after it 
gets out of the egg. As soon as it is free from the shell it can 
run quite rapidly, understands the art of hiding in the grass and 
actually begins hustling for itself. It can fly a little within ten 
days. Of course the parent birds have to watch over the young 
birds for a time, and assist them in finding grain and bugs, just 
as does a hen with her chickens. The habits of the quail are 
so nearly like those of a chicken that if you know how an old 
hen brings up her young, it is not necessary to tell you anything 
further about a quail. 

If the female quail is killed after the eggs are laid the male 
will sit upon them and hatch and raise the family. He is an 
admirable husband in all respects, and he is a more faithful 
widower, if fate decrees that he be a widower, than is the female 
a widow. The female, if the male is killed while she is sitting, 
will desert the nest and refuse to bring up the family. 

It is during the early days of housekeeping that the male sits 



110 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

upon a fence or log or stump and whistles "Bob White." It is 
his love song. He leaves it off as soon as the family is grown, 
and he does not sing any more until the next spring. Both 
male and female have a "call," which can be heard for some 
distance, and when the covey is separated they can easily get 
together. 

One of the cunning things that a quail does is to mislead its 
enemies when they come about the nest or the very young birds. 
The old bird will flutter about on the ground as if it were crippled. 
A cat, for instance, will see her and attempt to catch her. The 
bird flutters and flutters but manages to keep a foot or two out 
of reach of the cat all the time, getting farther and farther away 
from the nest. She thus keeps up the deception until she has 
led the enemy a long way from her home, when she will fly up 
into a tree or across the fields. Boys have been known to follow 
a quail two hundred yards in an effort to catch her, believing 
that the bird had a broken wing. A number of other birds 
practice the same deception. 

Whether in the leaves or grass or plowed ground or upon the 
bare earth, a quail seems to match exactly its surroundings. 
Its mottled browny feathers blend with everything. It remains 



THE QUAIL 111 



motionless when hiding, not even batting its eyes. That makes 
it all the harder for a person or a hawk or other enemy of the 
quail to locate it when once it is hidden. 

There are a number of varieties of the quail, some of them 
being of a pale-bluish color and wearing a topknot or crown 
upon their heads. That kind is known as the California quail. 
The common brown variety throughout the southern and cen- 
tral parts of the United States — as far north as Michigan, of 
late years, and as far west as the Rocky Mountains — is known 
as the Virginia quail. In parts of the South they are called 
partridges, but the true partridge is a different bird. 




THE BAT 




CHAPTER XVIII 

THE BAT 

OYS are not to blame for thinking that a bat 
is a bird, for a lot of people used to think so. 
As a matter of fact, though, a bat is no more 
a bird than a mouse would be if it had a toy 
balloon fastened to it. 

A bat is an animal that feeds upon insects and flies about at 
night. They do not exactly have wings, either. They have a 
thin, elastic membrane attached to their fore legs and by 
stretching it out they are able to fly about as well as a bird. 

The toes or fingers of a bat's fore feet are long and slender, 
and the membrane is fastened to them very much as the cover 
of an umbrella is fastened to the ribs. In fact, a bat's wings 
look something like little umbrellas. These toes or fingers 
strengthen the wing-like formation as the ribs of a parasol 
strengthen it. 



116 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

In addition to the fingers, the bat also has a thumb, or what 
corresponds to a thumb, although it is nothing more nor less 
than a hook. When the wings — that is what we shall have to 
call them — are closed the fore legs are used in walking, the 
thumb or hook forming the foot, but it is pretty hard for a bat 
to walk. It reaches out one of its hooks and drags itself forward 
and then reaches out the other one and thus wobbles and drags 
itself along clumsily. 

The hind feet of a bat have five toes, four of which have 
crooked claws upon them. The bat hangs by these claws instead 
of sitting upon a limb as does a bird. It sleeps that way — with 
its head hanging down — and it sleeps more than it does anything 
else. 

There never was any sense in that old saying, "as blind as a 
bat." Bats are not blind, although they have the smallest kind 
of an eye, almost in the ear, and sometimes it is covered with 
hair until it would appear that it cannot see at all. But it can 
— it can see some — and what it lacks in sight is more than made 
up by feeling and hearing. 

A bat can probably hear and feel better and quicker than any 
other animal. It can feel so easily that when one is blind- 



THE BAT 117 



folded and turned loose in a room across which are stretched 
numerous ropes, it will fly in and out among them without 
touching one, and it will never fly against a wall. It can tell 
by the pressure of the air, some way, that an obstruction is near 
and it will dodge around it. 

The ear of the bat is wonderfully constructed and is out of 
all proportion to the size of the animal. We do not mean the 
little flap-like things boys call ears, but the machine inside of 
the head which does the hearing. It is probably possible for a 
bat to hear insects humming when several yards away and 
when a man could hear nothing at all. 

Bats have teeth like mice — or something like mice — and do 
not have bills like birds. It has a wide mouth, because it grabs 
its food as it flies, and with its sharp, white teeth it presents the 
appearance of grinning at a boy when it opens its mouth. 

The bat sleeps during the day in a nook or cranny of a wall 
or under the bark of a tree, and toward nightfall it flies out 
and goes after bugs. It flies all night and next morning goes 
back to its home and hangs with its head downward until dusk 
again comes. 

As soon as it gets so cold that the insects are no longer in the 



118 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

air the bat goes to sleep. It enters a state of torpidity, as the 
scientific people say, and does not awaken until spring. A 
young bat looks exactly like a young mouse, and it is brought 
up on milk the same way that a mouse is, until it gets big 
enough to go out and catch insects. 

Hundreds of years ago when people did not take time to find 
out about bats, some one said that they brought bad luck, and 
that they scattered diseases — and a lot of other unkind things 
were said about them. There is nothing in all of that talk. A 
bat is a very clever little fellow and does no harm to any one. 
The stories people used to tell about his being dangerous are no 
good. Bats are not dangerous. Even the awful vampires we 
read about — and they are another kind of bats— do not kill 
anybody. Boys have been scared to sleep with tales about 
vampires fanning people to sleep and sucking their blood, but 
vampires have something else to do besides fooling around 
sucking blood. 




THE REDHEAD WOODPECKER 




CHAPTER XIX 

THE REDHEAD WOODPECKER 

T is pretty hard to say what would become of 
the old redhead woodpeckers if it were not 
for the dead trees and snags that one sees 
about the wood and creeks and fence rows. 
Seems like the dead trees were made on purpose for them, and 
that they were made on purpose for the dead trees. 

Boys always speak of him as "old redhead." Of course there 
are young redheads, but it doesn't sound just right. It is nearly 
every boy's ambition to get a shot at an old redhead woodpecker, 
perhaps because he is such a fine target sitting upon the dull 
side of a decaying pole or perched upon the ragged end of a 
sycamore snag. 

Nature made him just right. She gave him four toes and 
placed two of them in front and two of them behind, so that 
whether he is going up a tree headforemost or coming down it 
headforemost, there are always a couple of toes with sharp 



122 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

claws to hold him in place. Nature also gave him an appetite 
for ants and bugs and other insects, and she fitted him out for 
gathering them in. His bill is long and sharp and hard, slightly 
flattened at the end. His tongue is twice as long as his bill, 
and is hung upon a set of muscles unlike the muscles of the 
tongues of other birds, so that he can swing it out and draw it 
back quicker than a boy can wink his eye. 

Upon the end of the tongue is a hard, bony substance, pointed 
like a needle, with little beards upon it, and when that tongue 
is pierced through a big, juicy bug the bug cannot wiggle off. 
Besides, there is a regular supply of mucilage handy, which 
covers the tongue and the gnats and tiny ants stick to it when 
it is thrust among them. This pasty stuff that covers a wood- 
pecker's tongue is supplied through little glands in proper 
amounts and is of great benefit to the bird when he starts out 
to cure his hunger. 

It is hardly necessary to describe him, as everybody is ac- 
quainted with him. His blood-red head, his blue-black body, 
the pure white of his underparts and tail and portions of the 
wings make him so unlike any other bird that there is no chance 
of mistaking him for any of his kinsmen. And his dipping, 




13 



RED-HEADED WOODPECKER 

(Melanerpes erythrocephalus.) 

Life-size. 



<SON, MENTZER £ GROVER, CHICAGO 



THE REDHEAD WOODPECKER 123 

wave-like .motion of flight, rising and falling as he scoots from 
the top of a tree across an open space to the top of another 
tree, enables one to know who he is whether the red and black 
and white are visible or not. 

The redhead sings no song, but he yells checker, checker, 
checker, when a yellow-hammer comes his way, or he wants to 
attract the attention of his mate. And let him get upon a good 
sounding-board of a dead tree and the noise he can make with 
that bill of his can be heard a quarter of a mile or more as he 
strikes it against the wood faster than anybody can count. 

He is a carpenter bird, in that he bores a hole in wood and 
makes a nest in the hole, or rather scoops out a place for his 
wife to deposit the eggs. The redheads do not need a nest of 
grass or straw, the fine chips from the hole that is bored are 
quite good enough for a mattress for the young birds. Nor do 
the eggs have to be colored, since no one can see them any way. 
They are pure white, and there are four or five or six of them, 
sometimes three feet below the hole which answers for a door 
to the home. 

In addition to eating insects, the redhead is fond of nuts and 
the seed of berries and small fruits, and acorns. In fact, where 



124 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

there are plenty of redheads you will find an abundance of 
those things, especially of nuts and acorns. He is a good pro- 
vider and at times stores up food in the crevices of bark and 
in the forks of limbs and in holes. Lots of times when you see 
an old redhead climbing about the trunk of a big tree in winter 
when there are no insects, he is looking for a nut placed there 
the fall before— or for a nut some other redhead placed there, 
for it doesn't make any difference to him who placed it there if 
only he can find it when he is hungry. 




THE MEADOW LARKS 




CHAPTER XX 

THE MEADOW LARKS 

ever you are walking along through a nice, 
grassy field, in May or the early part of June, 
and a meadow lark flies up about six feet in 
front of you, get down on your hands and 
knees and look for a nest. You cannot get that close to a 
meadow lark unless it is upon a nest. 

Then, after you have found the nest, you may be able to make 
a record something like this — and have lots of fun: May 12 — 
Found a meadow lark's nest. Located on the gentle slope of 
a hill, in grass a foot high, several briars growing about it, and 
a dogwood tree in full bloom ten feet from it — in the edge of a 
wood. Five eggs in the nest — dull white, with reddish brown 
spots on the large end. Decidedly pointed and blending nicely 
with the brown grass in the bottom of the nest. 

Nest could be seen only by stooping down right in front of it; 
grass drooped over it so it could not be seen from any other 



128 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

direction; faced to the northeast — so the sun could not shine 
into it and burn the young birds when they are hatched. Mother 
lark flew away across the field as if she were not concerned and 
made no sound of any kind. 

The nest was only a hollowed-out place in the ground, evi- 
dently where an old cow had stepped when the earth was soft, 
and the grass was matted down in the bottom of it. Very little 
if any grass had been carried to the nest; only that growing 
handy had been used. No hairs or feathers had been used, but 
the nest was soft and warm and well protected by the over- 
lapping spears of grass. 

May 13 — Visited nest at 5 p.m. Mother lark absent, but 
three of the eggs had hatched. Mother bird evidently away for 
a drink or after something to eat. Not a bird of any kind about 
the place, except the little, wormy things in the nest, blind and 
helpless, with never a feather upon them. As the nest was 
approached, the three young birds opened their mouths wide, 
but could not utter a sound. Just lay there with their pale-red 
throats shining like nearly ripe strawberries. Stood still beside 
the nest two or three minutes, and gradually the mouths closed. 
Then stamped upon the ground and the mouths opened. Came 



THE MEADOW LARKS 129 

to the conclusion that the mouths worked automatically at the 
least sound, for surely such helpless things could not believe 
that the mother had returned with something for them to eat. 

May 14 — Four of the eggs hatched. Mother lark again 
absent. Could not see her anywhere. Mouths of birds again 
opened as the nest was approached and again closed after every- 
thing was quiet for a few minutes. Could easily pick out the 
three birds hatched yesterday, as they were larger than the 
fourth; they had actually grown in twenty-four hours until one 
could notice the difference in the size of them. They were 
about the size of the first joint of a boy's forefinger yesterday; 
to-day they are as large as the first joint of his thumb. 

May 15 — One egg still unhatched. The four birds doing 
nicely. Only two of them opened their mouths when the nest 
was approached, but the other two "opened up" when they were 
touched with the finger. Dark-colored fuzz has come out upon 
all of them, and along the edge of the pink wing are signs of 
dark feathers puffing through, like splinters in a boy's finger. 
Mother lark again absent, and the conclusion is that this is 
about the time of day she leaves the nest; 4 p.m. 

May 16 — The fifth egg does not seem inclined to hatch. 



130 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

The four birds are as large as the first joint of a man's thumb, 
and are covered with dark-colored fuzz, the pin feathers easily 
seen on the edge of the wings. None of them opened their 
mouths until they were touched with the finger. Birds not yet 
able to sit up in the nest, but lie in any position placed, although 
they manage to stick their necks up. 

May 18 — Birds as large as small hen's eggs. Seem to have 
puffed up and are assuming the shape of sure-enough birds. 
The spots where the eyes ought to be are getting blacker and the 
eyes will probably break through soon. Real feathers coming 
out on the wings where the splinters were a few days ago. 

May 21 — Birds have their eyes opened. Great big fellows 
now, with feathers coming out all over them, especially along 
the back and upon the wings, and they have little spikes where 
the tail feathers ought to be. They can sit up now and as one 
approaches the nest they huddle down close together and look at 
him. The nest is almost too small for them — the four of them 
making a big, double handful when removed from the nest for 
inspection. Seemed pleased when put back in the nest. 

The absence of the mother is puzzling, and the father has 
never been seen. He must have been killed shortly after the 



THE MEADOW LARKS 131 

eggs were laid. There are a number of larks in other parts of 
the field, but never has a male been seen in the vicinity of the 
nest, and it would appear that if there were two birds engaged 
in feeding the young, one or the other would be seen occasionally 
upon these four o'clock visits. 

May %5 — Removed the unhatched egg from the nest — and 
took it home. Young birds are fine fellows, almost grown. 
One of them jumped off of the palm where he was being held 
and fluttered in the grass. Are strong and robust, and the toe- 
nails are getting sharp. When they are lifted out of the nest 
they scratch and grip one's finger and flutter. They can stand 
up on their yellow legs. The feathers are still dark and no sign 
of color in them — that is, no bright colors like those the old birds 
wear. They are pretty well covered with feathers, and their 
wings are getting strong. The spikes in the tail have turned to 
feathers, but they still look stubby and ragged. 

May 30 — No birds in the nest. Everything as silent as the 
tomb. Nest has evidently been deserted for a day or more, 
as it is cold. No young birds within several hundred yards of 
the nest, but over in the next field are a couple of wobbly young 
larks that can barely fly from the fence to the top of a tree. Do 



132 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

not know whether they are "our" birds or not. In fact, the 
future of "our" birds must forever remain a mystery. It doesn't 
seem possible for them to have matured so rapidly. Maybe an 
old cat came by and ate them. Or a snake swallowed them, or 
a hawk carried them off. One ought to build a tent near a 
lark's nest when he finds it, and watch it day and night, if he 
expects to know all about them. 

Anyway, the lark is a beauty, black marks about the eyes, 
stiff, sticky feathers along the side of the head, soft yellow upon 
the breast and sides, white streaks near the tip of the tail, and 
brown, mottled backs — in places resembling the quail. The 
hind toe is long and all of the toes have sharp claws upon them 
— unusually sharp. The legs are big and strong, and the bill 
a good one. The male wears a black badge of honor about the 
chest, and sings a clear, sweet song as he flies. 

The meadow lark belongs to the starling family, and is related 
to the larks of England which the poets have made famous — 
the lark that rises straight up toward the sun and sings all 
the way up until he is nearly out of sight. Our larks do not 
fly high. They start with a jump, and flutter in the air and 
settle down easily with outstretched wings. Where they are 



THE MEADOW LARKS 



133 



migrating, they fly in short waves, opening and closing the 
wings a few times rapidly in succession, and then sailing for a 
few yards. They are fond of sitting upon fences, or stumps, 
and singing their short, quavering song, and they feed upon the 
ground, eating along with bugs and worms, seeds and grains 
and berries. 




THE BLACKBIRDS 




CHAPTER XXI 

THE BLACKBIRDS 

O matter how many fancy names people give 
to him, boys will always know him as a black- 
bird. Folks called him the grackle and men 
wrote things about him and put them in the 
dictionaries under that heading, where nobody thought to 
look. Then, he has an uncle they call the jackdaw; lives down 
along the Southeastern coast. But blackbird is good enough 
name for the proud and glossy fellow we see every time we get 
out where the shade is. 

Crow blackbird some call him, to distinguish him from his 
cousin, the red-winged blackbird. And he does resemble the 
crow. Walks like the crow, proudly, his head drawn back as 
if he had a check rein; eats the food the crow eats, is noisy like 
the crow, and loves the company of his fellows as does the crow, 
but he is more brilliant. 

His head and neck are steel-blue, running into a glossy sheen 
of purplish hue upon the shoulders. There is the reflection of 



138 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

copper, and of greenish gold, and of sullen blackness. You 
can see almost any metallic shade upon the male blackbird. 
The female is more modestly arrayed, wearing a plain black 
gown that does not glisten. 

Pine trees are the favorite places for their nests, and they like 
to nest in groups— two or three nests in one tree sometimes, and 
a dozen in a cluster of pine trees is not infrequent. Before they 
mate in the spring, and after the young are grown, they roost 
in flocks and such a chattering one can hear nowhere else. They 
are not afraid of man, although they are somewhat shy, and 
they go into the towns and villages at times to roost or build 
their nests, flying far into the country for their food. 

But along the deep shade of the little streams is where they 
are most at home; or in the low-lying meadows and skirting 
the swamps and marshes. The red- winged blackbirds live in 
the swamps and marshes almost exclusively, and the crow black- 
birds meet and mingle with the red-winged fellows upon terms 
of equality. But when night comes they separate, and you will 
never find a red-winged one roosting in a pine with the crow 
kind. 

Away down South they may build their nests in rotten snags 




19 



RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD 
(Agelaius phueniceusj. 
Vz Life-size. 



COPYRIGHT AND P'JB^SHcO BY 
fK'NSON, MENTZER & GROVER, CHICAGO 



THE BLACKBIRDS 139 

of trees, but in the North they are more particular. They build 
the body of the nest of roots and small twigs and stems of grass, 
and line that with mud. Then they place the soft hairs and 
feathers and fine grasses and prepare a respectable home for 
the four or five or six eggs that are laid. The eggs are bluish, 
daintily marked with streaks of brown and black, something 
like little veins broken and scattered about promiscuously. 

While they eat grains and berries and bugs and beetles and 
other things that birds eat, they love snails better than anything 
else, and the little periwinkles that one finds sticking to pebbles 
in shallow water. The blackbirds wade along the shore of 
streams, or balance themselves upon drooping willows that 
overlook the water, and pick up their favorite food as daintily 
as a school girl handles her chocolate drops. 

While they spend the coldest part of the winter in the South, 
they visit the North early in the spring and remain until the 
other birds have departed. They are splendid fliers, and it 
does not take them long to reach their Southern homes. Even 
in the North, when they start from the feeding ground to the 
roost, they fly high and gracefully, steering themselves with 
their rudder-like tail. They do not spread the tail in flying as 



140 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

does a robin, but carry it up and down like a hand with the 
ringers pressed together, and by turning it gently from side to 
side are able to guide themselves as a launch is guided by the 
rudder. 

The red-winged blackbird is some smaller than the crow 
blackbird. He, too, is well named. He is a jet black, with 
never a light feather upon him, but on the shoulder of the wing 
is a splotch of scarlet, resting upon a border of soft, creamy 
yellow. Only the male wears the scarlet, the female being 
much smaller than the male, and of a dull, rusty color, by no 
means beautiful. It nests in tufts of grass or in alder bushes, 
and lays four to six eggs of white, slightly tinged with blue and 
bearing faint purple marks upon the larger end. 

The notes of the crow blackbird are rather harsh and grating, 
but the red-winged fellows, balancing upon a weed at set of sun, 
utter a plaintive little song that is more pleasing than the music 
of the crow blackbirds. 




THE WREN 




CHAPTER XXII 

THE WREN 

RENS are so modest that the noisy, quarrel- 
some sparrows have driven many of them 
away. There are fewer of them at this time 
than for several years, but there are still 
enough to prevent their becoming extinct if only people would 
help them to fight the other birds and assist them in raising 
their families. 

The easiest way of providing for the wren is to get a small 
box, one about the size of a cigar box — only it must not smell 
too strongly of tobacco — and cut a hole in it so small that no 
other bird can get through it. The hole need not be larger 
than your thumb. Fasten the box in a shady place, against the 
house — under the eaves of the porch is a good place — and you 
will find that a wren will build her nest in the box. If she 
does not do so this year, she will next year, or the next. Once 



144 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

a wren takes up her board with you, you will never lack for 
company, for year after year you will find a pair of birds living 
in the room you have furnished them. 

Of course we are talking about the house wren, or "Jenny 
Wren," as she is called. In England they call her "Kitty 
Wren." There are many varieties, but the little house wren, 
beautifully brown, with square, straight tail sticking up into 
the air like a boy's sore toe — that is the wren we are talking 
about. 

When there were plenty of wrens in this country they built 
their nests in the most unusual places — under a pan the busy 
housewife had left upturned upon a shelf at the back door, 
or in the stirrup of a saddle that was hanging in the shed, or 
in the mouth of a cannon that was on exhibition in the park, 
or even in the pocket of an old coat that was left hanging on 
the back porch. 

The wren believes in a large family. She will lay six to ten 
eggs — sometimes an even dozen — and the eggs are grayish 
white, with tawny spots upon them. It requires ten days for 
them to hatch, and a pair of wrens will bring up two large 
families during the year. 



THE WREN 145 



When wrens undertake to build a nest in a box, they will fill 
the whole box, no matter how large it is. They will carry a 
half bushel of straw and grass and feathers to the box. The 
outside of the nest is carelessly made — just a big bunch of stuff 
of almost every kind. But in the center of the mass, where 
the eggs are to be laid, you will find delicate work. 

They seem to prefer horse hairs and threads for lining their 
nests. Long hairs out of the tails of horses are wound round 
and round inside the nest, and when it is completed it is as 
soft and warm as a young bird could desire. 

Many birds will not occupy a nest after a person has put his 
hand into it, but you can take the eggs out of a wren's nest and 
look at them and put them back and it will be all right with 
her. The handful of youngsters, hot and squirming, their 
little mouths looking like red peppers, feel so soft and silky 
that you will want to take them out every day and show them 
to your friends. 

While the song of the wren is short, being a sort of jerky 
chirp, it is clear and sweet and distinct. The male sings 
some in gloomy weather, like the male redbird, and when 
his wife is sitting upon the eggs the proud fellow loves to sit 



146 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



in a vine near the nest and tell the whole world what a happy 
creature he is. He sings best between daylight and sun-up, 
and is not often heard during the middle of the day unless the 
sky is overcast with clouds, when he may honor you with a few 
short notes. 




THE ORIOLE 




CHAPTER XXIII 

THE ORIOLE 

NE time a man who knew much about birds 
thought he could divide them into great 
families, and he said there were carpenter 
birds — those which bore holes in trees; and 
miner birds — those which dig into the earth; and plasterers — 
those which make a nest of mud, as the barn martins; and 
the weavers — those which weave a home for themselves. But 
it was not an especially good division, because it means so 
little. 

The oriole is the best specimen of the weavers. The Balti- 
more oriole it is called. Some people call it a golden robin, 
others refer to it as the hang-bird, and still others say it is the 
fire-bird. Since we do not have in this country any other kind 
of oriole, we might as well leave off the Baltimore and the golden 
robin and everything else and just call him by a name that 
makes us think of a golden flash of light twining in and out 



150 OUR BIRD FRIENDS 

among the trees and of a lead-colored basket hanging from a 
swinging twig high up in the branches and away out toward 
the tip end where no boy can climb. 

It is one of our most lovable birds. Its song is sweet and 
simple; eight or ten notes of mellowness; a pause and the same 
eight or ten notes repeated, now softer, now louder — always the 
same eight or ten pulsations of liquid melody. 

And as for its color — was ever there a more delightful blending, 
or a brighter one? The male is black all around the neck and 
head, and the fore part of the wings and tail are black. The 
quills have a white margin. The underparts and portions of 
the wings and the lower part of the back are brightest orange, 
tinged with vermilion upon the neck and breast. The bill is 
a light blue, as are the feet, and the eye is yellow. It flits in and 
out among the green leaves, leaving one bewildered at the 
movements. 

The female is colored as is the male, except that instead of 
the bright orange and vermilion there is dull yellow and olive 
brown. She is also slightly smaller than her lord and master, 
who does not assume his best garments until the third year. 
The first year there is little difference between the male and 




FROM COL. 

56 



r . M. WOODRUFF 



BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 

(Icterus galbula). 

I Life-size. 



PUBLISHED BY ATKINSON, MENTZER 4 GROVER, CHICAGO 



THE ORIOLE 151 



female; the second year shows the male growing brighter, and 
the third year and thereafter he bears upon him the colors that 
distinguish him. 

In preparing their nest the orioles select a slender branch that 
runs far out from the body of the tree — always a green branch 
with leaves upon it. A maple is a favorite place for them, but 
they nest also in other trees, sometimes in a wild cherry that 
has been left along an old fence row. A foot or two from the 
end of the twig, where there is a fork, is the place selected. 
Around these two or three branches, often smaller than a lead 
pencil, the birds wind strings or long fibers from dead grasses, 
until the limbs are covered, being inside of the nest as one might 
say. Then they begin weaving a swinging basket that is water- 
proof, knotting thread to thread, and bits of grass to bits of 
grass, and poking into it and through it the hairs out of horses' 
tails and the slender stems of wire-like vegetation. When it is 
completed it swings in the breeze, high up and secure, and the 
round hole for entrance near the top is perfectly proportioned. 

In this nest are laid four long eggs — fully an inch in length 
and slender, of a light-brown color, and streaked and dotted. 
Since it is impossible for any one or anything to see the eggs 



152 



OUR BIRD FRIENDS 



lying in the nest, they ought to be pure white, but they are not. 
Possibly they are colored just because the birds themselves want 
to admire them; certainly it is not for protection. 

The oriole does not come North until late in the spring and 
leaves when the first leaves begin to fade. Upon his migrations 
he travels in the daytime, flying high and gracefully, and he 
spends a long winter's holiday in the far South, going as far 
as Brazil. 




Set up, electrotyped, printed and bound at 
THE OUTING PRESS 

Deposit, New York 



I 



WH27 BOS 



